- “Why has the flooding in Kenya been so devasting?”.
- “Floods, landslides in India’s Tripura displace tens of thousands.”
- “Deadly fires edge closer to Athens and suburbs count cost.”
- “World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target.”
All headlines from international news platforms in the past few months, none of them unusual these days. Climate and biodiversity impacts that many scientists were warning about 15 years ago are now manifesting. We have global frameworks in place – the Paris Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Agreement – but achieving the science-based targets set out in those frameworks seems improbable.
The language of ‘emergency’ and ‘crisis’ is accurate and plays an important role in galvanising action. The IPCC and IPBES both tell us we need transformative change in human systems of a scale never before attempted. People are unlikely to undertake such a momentous task if they do not perceive great need.
But history and simple human experience tell us that people are equally unlikely to maintain any undertaking, particularly one on this scale, if they perceive it to be hopeless. Some people believe the messaging but feel powerless to respond to challenges on this scale – humans were designed to live in local communities, not tackle global issues. Others work every day to develop and implement responses to these crises, but are worn down and constrained by the constant negative discourse. Anxiety and depression are common; despair is neither an unusual nor an irrational response. In the world of environmental and conservation leadership, alongside the voice of global crisis, emergency, and the necessity of transformative action, there is a need for a parallel voice of encouragement, of realistic positivity and of hope. Conservation Optimism, alongside other organisations, aims to meet that need.
Established at the University of Oxford in the UK in 2016, Conservation Optimism aims to support, enable and empower conservationists, in the broadest sense of anyone involved in conservation, around the world, by sharing hope and building capacity and community. On a weekly basis, members of the worldwide Conservation Optimism Team – many of them students or early-career conservationists, all of them volunteers – share stories of conservation success, while a community of over 180 conservation organisations exchanges skills and lessons learned. A global team crafts universal messaging of evidence-based hope and optimism that regional hubs deliver in locally appropriate voices.
Perhaps the epitome of Conservation Optimism has been the summits. Held in 2017 and 2019, they allowed people to come together for a few days, not only to share their inspiration and wisdom but also to build a community of mutual support and shared mission.
Five years later, in a post-pandemic world, this year’s Conservation Optimism Summit will be held both in Oxford and Online. Conservationists from every (inhabited 🐧) continent will come together to share inspiration and lessons of success. Presentations give way to teaching workshops where organisations and individuals can teach the skills they have developed. And there is space for people to re-centre, to restore some equilibrium in the midst of a supportive community. The aim is to send people away feeling empowered, enabled and embraced – with renewed agency, new skills, and greater optimism.
These conversations, and the conservation effort that underpins them, have to be global and inclusive. Modern expertise and traditional wisdom sit in eminent universities and indigenous communities, in environmental nonprofits and dynamic conservation champions, on every continent. The scale and complexity of the challenge requires a response that is collaborative and international; in this great effort, there is no time for territoriality or old politics.
And the need for inclusivity and diversity applies not only to every continent but also to every sector. Conservation researchers and practitioners need to be working not only with colleagues from every aspect of natural and social science, but also with the worlds of business, communication and art. We must not only discover new ways to protect our world and live sustainably, we must articulate that learning in ways that are scientifically, socially, economically and politically literate. We must speak not only to minds but also to hearts if this great undertaking is to be successful.
The Conservation Optimism Summit 2024 will bring together over 200 people from all over the world, in Oxford and Online, from 16-19 September.
